How To Draw Crafterella

A step-by-step guide on how-to draw your own version of Cut Out + Keep's crafty superhero Crafterella!

Posted by Cat Morley

About

A couple of you asked if we could make a tutorial for how-to draw Crafterella, so I thought I'd take a break from working on her latest comic to make a step-by-step guide illustrating my process. I've never been a great artist but Crafterella is so much fun to draw and I hope you'll find this tutorial helpful. Crafterella and I would both love to see your versions!

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You Will Need (5 things)

Eraser
2B mechanical Pencil
2H mechanical Pencil
Drawing Pad
Scanner , computer & software editing program

Steps (42 steps, 60 minutes)

1

The tools I use are pretty basic. Grab a sketch pad, eraser, 2B and 2H pencil. I like to use mechanical pencils as they stay nice and sharp, but any will do.

The hardest part of drawing is deciding what you're going to draw. Get an idea of Crafterella's rough pose in your head, the expression on her face and if she's holding any props. Keep this in mind as you draw.
2

Start by drawing an oval, using the lightest 2H pencil, to represent Crafterella's head. It sometimes takes me a few tries to get the size just right. Once you've got her head just right, sketch ovals where her shoulders, elbows, hands and hips would be to get feel for the pose she'll be doing.
3

Draw lines between the ovals to make sure her posture looks correct.
4

Draw a curved line down the middle of the oval to reprsent the centre of Crafterella's face and sketch lines where her eyes, nose and mouth would be to get the position just right. Sketch the outline of two cat ears in roughly the right position on top of her head.
5

Lightly pencil in the details of her face and redraw the outline of her face to look more human.
6

Move on to her hair, lightly pencilling the strands of hair in around her ears.
7

Move down to the lower body, sketching in her neck, the width of her arms and shape of her body.
8

Erase the original ovals as you draw in her arms.
9

Hands are always the trickiest part. Take your time working out how the hands are going to be positioned and where the wrist, knuckles, fingers and thumb are going to be.
10

Finish up your initial sketch and then grab your 2B pencil. It won't look much like Crafterella at this point but we're past the hardest part.
11

Using your dark pencil, start drawing Crafterella's eyes. I like to start with her eyes and work out from there because it starts to look more and more like her.
12

Sketch her nose and eyebrows.
13

Sketch her mouth.
14

Draw the outline of her face and neck.
15

Draw the strands of hair that frame her face.
16

Add her ears and the rest of her hair.
17

Start drawing her lower body.
18

Work on her hands when you're feeling brave enough. Adding her gloves and claws at the end of her fingers.
19

Finish drawing the body.
20

Start erasing the light sketches from your initial drawing and use the 2H pencil to start shading her mask, hair, collar and gloves.
21

Add any extra little details or props you like.
22

When you're happy with your sketch, it's time to scan it in to your computer.
23

Open up your drawing in your favourite software editing program. I'm going to use PhotoShop.
24

The sketch never looks great when I scan it in, so we're going to adjust the levels. Use the highlight eyedropper to select the darkest grey of the paper and make it white.
25

Pull up the white level arrow and pull down the dark level arrow until you have a nice black & white outline.
26

Now Desaturate the image to remove any accidental colour.
27

Duplicate this layer and rename it to Crafterella.
28

Set the Crafterella layer to Multiply.
29

Click back on the Background layer, Select All and fill with White.
30

Create a new layer called Colors, set to Multiply and paint swatches of all the different colors you're going to use.
31

Crate a new layer called Skin and use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to trace the outline of Crafterella's ears, face, shoulders, arms and legs.
32

Fill this layer with her skin color.
33

Create a new layer called Clothes and use the same technique to fill in her clothes with the correct colors.
34

Create a new layer called Hair and fill in her hair with dark brown.
35

On the same layer, select the highlights of her hair and fill in with a lighter brown.
36

Add a new layer called Accessories and color in her accessories.
37

Add a new layer called Details and colour in all of her little details - like her eyes, lips, mouth and craft tools.
38

Keep going until she's colored in perfectly.
39

Now for the fun part, we're going to add shading using the Burn brush. Pick a soft brush, set to burn Midtones at 15% and start shading her skin.
40

The first strokes will be subtle but you can keep going over the same bits to add more and more depth.
41

Work your way through each of the layers, burning and shading each.
42

Finish up by using the eraser to clean up any mistakes or excess lines. You're all done!